French farmers stormed Paris last week, choosing to sell their fruit and vegetables face to face in protest of the retail mark-ups heaped onto their products.
The farmers accused the country’s six leading chains, which are responsible for 90 per cent of retail sales, of short-changing them while unfairly bumping up prices.
Sylvie Mayer, a former member of European Parliament, said both farmers and consumers are being mistreated.
Speaking at last Wednesday’s event, she said: “Today it’s a day of solidarity between farmers and consumers. At one end of the chain, the farmers are disappearing. Every 20 minutes, you have a farm going bankrupt.”
French farmers say supermarkets hike up the cost of their goods by 40 per cent and are calling for stricter government control of supermarkets’ profit-making tactics.
